Sounding Attic in Imperial Inscriptions

This paper investigates whether the precepts of linguistic Atticism shaped the epigraphic production of the Imperial age. It begins by posing the question in the light of modern theories postulating that the Attic dialect survived in Roman Attica and that the Atticists modelled their orthoepic prescriptions on the pronunciation of contemporary educated Athenians. After highlighting some methodological difficulties inherent to these theories, the paper turns to a consideration of the preservation of Attic ττ for Koine σσ in Attic Imperial inscriptions. By analysing this consonantal trait, I show that “conservative” dialectal spellings in inscriptions from Roman Attica are probably almost always the outcome of conscious archaizing choices that, far from evidencing the survival of the dialect, bear witness to trends at play in Graeco-Roman culture of the time.